Don't panic! Call for calm after Budget pensions IHT change

The announcement that pensions will fall within an individual's estate for inheritance tax (IHT) purposes shouldn't have come as a huge shock to those in the industry. The shocks came back in 2014 when George Osborne announced pension freedoms, including the unexpectedly generous treatment of death benefits, followed by Jeremy Hunt's scrapping of the lifetime allowance last year. Although I wouldn't be as bold as to say I predicted IHT applying to pensions, I did state that some kind of tax on death benefits was an obvious way to go – and was always more likely than the heavily rumour...